Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Debate between Tom Pursglove and Keir Starmer

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

Mr Speaker, I rather thought that the point of interventions was to engage in the debate that was going on, rather than to make a completely different point. Our position on the customs union has been made clear very, very many times, and I do not see that that is an intervention on the point that I am making, so I will press on.

The third line of defence that was advanced by the Minister, who now seeks instructions from the civil servants he disparaged yesterday, was that any disclosure might harm or undermine the negotiations. Again, we have heard that one before. We have always accepted that anything that genuinely undermines the negotiations should not be put into the public domain, but there is a difference between that and something that is simply embarrassing to the Government, a point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) yesterday afternoon. This motion provides for confidentiality. That defence was immediately undermined by the Minister himself yesterday. When there is a leak, Governments usually say that they will not comment on the leak, and that they do not rely on the information in the leak, because if it is not to be in the public domain, nobody should rely on it. But the Minister not only commented on it, but sought to rely on the leak to advance his own case. When challenged by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) about the customs union, he prayed in aid the figures, saying that

“there is economic growth under all the scenarios in the economic assessment.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 683.]

One cannot simply say, “I will rely on the figures to advance my own case, but I won’t publish the full figures so that anyone can question me properly on what I am saying.” We now need to go back to first principles.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

rose—

Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Debate between Tom Pursglove and Keir Starmer

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention. There are two aspects to today’s debate. Partly, there is the political aspect: what is the role of Parliament. There is also the question of uncertainty. It is absolutely clear that, across business, across EU citizens and across the population as a whole, there is great uncertainty about what the plans are, and that uncertainty simply cannot be kept in place for the next three years. It is growing uncertainty.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman set out for the House what scrutiny there was when the Lisbon treaty was ratified under the Gordon Brown Government?

[Keir Starmer]

There is different scrutiny for different treaties and provisions. One example is the scrutiny that was provided in relation to the original decision to go into the European Economic Community, because then, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, Command Papers were put before the House. An economic impact assessment was also put before the House, and some of the Command Papers were voted on. The idea that scrutiny cannot be done and that it was not done in the past is wrong.